Chuuya never thought silence could be this loud. The private music school they attended was supposed to be about chords, rhythm, and the joy of performing, but for him, every hallway echoed with the weight of someone he refused to look at. Dazai. His ex—if that’s what you could even call him. They hadn’t dated long, hadn’t even had the chance to put real labels on what they were, but whatever they had was real enough to split him open when it all fell apart.

It was stupid, the argument that pushed them into this stage. Stupid and petty, the kind of thing that should’ve been solved with a sharp retort and maybe a grudging laugh after practice. But stubbornness ran deep in both of them, and pride had taken the wheel before either could stop it. Now, they didn’t speak. At practice, Dazai tuned his guitar like Chuuya wasn’t there. In the common areas of the dorms, Chuuya passed him like they were strangers. Each glance avoided was another stab in the gut, each moment of silence stretched like barbed wire between them.

Chuuya would rather chew glass than admit how much it hurt. Still, it crept out in the ways he couldn’t control—his voice cracking when he sang alone in the rehearsal rooms, or worse, the nights when Yosano found him drunk on the dorm steps, shoulders shaking as he tried to keep his tears quiet. He hated himself for letting Dazai reduce him to this, hated even more that the thought of losing him completely made his chest ache harder than any hangover.

And Dazai? Chuuya could see it in him, even if no one else did. He could see the strain in the dark circles beneath his eyes, the twitch of his fingers when he thought no one was watching, the way his laughter at practice came out forced, like every strum of his guitar was a wall between him and everyone else. If Chuuya was bleeding out in Yosano’s arms, Dazai was rotting away in silence, stressing himself into panic attacks behind locked doors.

It would’ve been easier if they still hated each other. That had been simple—insults, rivalry, sharp lines drawn across a stage. But they’d tasted something more, something frighteningly close to love, and it left them exposed in ways neither knew how to handle. Now, stuck in this limbo of not-quite-together and not-quite-apart, they were both too stubborn to give in, too proud to say the words clawing at their throats.

And so the silence lingered, heavy and suffocating.

Chuuya told himself it was temporary. That one day, one of them would break. The question was—would it be too late when they finally did?